Join EDSITEment in this series of out-of-the classroom activities that students can do after school at home, in their neighborhood or the general community, or just for summer fun.
How much history do you have in your home? Does your family have one of the objects shown here — tucked away in a closet or stowed in the cellar? At one time, many families had at least one of these objects. Now, they are history!
While this after-school project focuses on the late, great baseball player Jackie Robinson, the same techinques can be used to interview all sorts of people, both the famous and the ordinary. Useful tool for recording neighborhood history as well.
During the summer of 1890, Thomas Edison made plans to write a science fiction novel called Progress. The title was a good one for Edison. As inventor of the light bulb, it's not surprising that he looked forward to a bright future. In fact, he had made a career out of making improvements in people's lives.
During your lifetime, you have probably witnessed many changes in your neighborhood. New families arrive and old friends move away. Stores open for business or close up shop. Bicycle riders switch to skateboards and then graduate to driving cars. Over time, little changes like these alter the character of a neighborhood and even change the way it appears on a map. In this activity, you will trace the changes that have transformed your neighborhood over the past 25 years.
When editors put together a literary anthology, they choose pieces that tell a certain story. Whether it's a poetry anthology about city life, an anthology of folktales from the American West, or an anthology of short stories by African American writers, the pieces selected work together like the parts of story to illustrate a certain period, genre, or theme.
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